USB or NIC

[Pip_]

I have a cable modem that can be connected via USB or NIC what is better?

[Lobo]

NIC, 100% better:) :) :) :)

[onetrueday]

USB is unstable and slower. Otherwise cable companies would insist that people use usb connections to get online.

[lance-tek]

onetrueday:

are you coming to the tweaking forum now? I have only seen you in the OC forum till today

Nice to see ya here :)

[UOD]

Pip_, the short answer is to use a nic as Lobo said. To take it a bit further, USB can handle more bandwidth than your cable or dsl modem could deliver to it, USB can run at 10Mbps+, so it isn't an issue until you add more USB devices into the equation. USB shares it's bandwidth with all the other USB peripheral devices in your system. So lets say that you have a USB mouse, keyboard, netcam, printer, Mp3 player, digital camera all hooked up and running at once. Well that 10Mbps bandwidth is now shared amongst all those devices. If you now add in your USB connected modem, it will also have to share that bandwidth. Let's goto the next part of the equation...all those devices are connected and running, and you want to download a file off the internet. Well you may notice a decrease in your download speed because there isn't enough bandwidth to deliver to your modem which can download at a pretty good clip, 1Mbps not being too uncommon these days. So that creates a bottleneck in the system bus where that info just can't get to the CPU fast enough as you would like it to. Take some of those devices away and you may notice a performance increase. The advantage to USB is simply ease of setup..plug it in and it works. Now a NIC doesn't share that same bandwidth with any other shared device so it is in essence, dedicated to your modem stream. It is also much less taxing on the CPU, thereby giving you increased performance from your modem. In my experience, NICs are just as easy to setup as any other add in card. Just insert, startup, load drivers, and configure your network settings. Remember, NICs are a very old and reliable standard for networking and their drivers are for the most part rock solid. A good 10/100 Etherfast NIC from a good source like 3Com, or Linksys, or DLink will very rarely give you any headaches. The bandwidth issue with NICs is nullified because they can handle more than what any broadband connection can deliver. Most cable modems are set to deliver 3Mbps max and DSL is set at 1.5Mbps, not to mention that most ISP's cap download and upload speeds below this depending on your specific market.

So, a NIC will perform better than a USB interface and without having any driver issues like USB is so prone to have. I use a Linksys NIC and have found it to be rock solid.:)

[Pip_]

thanks

P.S. I go by just Pip but it was to short